Captain Shimron Hetmyer, along with his teammates, rushed to the boundary rope even though they were still one run away from victory. They could not wait to celebrate the piece of history they were about to make at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium yesterday. The West Indian youths secured their maiden ICC Under-19 World Cup title with a five-wicket victory against three-time champions India in the low-scoring final to give some hope to Caribbean cricket that has suffered a spiralling fall from grace.

It seemed that joy knew no bounds once the winning run came as the players started to run as fast as possible towards the two unbeaten batsmen Keacy Carty and Keemo Paul, who shared a 69-run sixth-wicket stand to overhaul India's 145 with only three balls to spare. Some did the celebratory slide on the ground, some grabbed the stumps, and others performed the famous Calypso dance in front of a small crowd and of course the 'Springerdance' (named after Shamar Springer, who became the centre of attraction for his chest-roll celebration in the tournament) was also unleashed.

West Indies were not the favourites in the 16-team tournament and nobody had expected a team which lost 0-3 in the build-up series against the home team, started the tournament with a 61-run defeat to England and entered the quarterfinal in controversial fashion after Keemo Paul effected a Mankad to claim the last Zimbabwe Under-19 wicket to come up victorious beating teams like Pakistan, Bangladesh and hot favourites India.

But a fantastic afternoon at Mirpur belonged to the Caribbean future cricketers as a quality display of pace bowling from Alzarri Joseph and Chemar Holder laid the foundation in the morning.

West Indies cricket and fast bowling go together like a horse and a carriage, but that connection has been fraying since the turn of the century. From the days of Learie Constantine to the fearsome quartet of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft, and later on to the likes of Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, fast bowlers have been the bread and butter of West Indies cricket.

It seemed that two exciting new ball bowlers Joseph and Holder -- especially the former -- brought back sweet memories for those ardent Caribbean cricket fans after Hetmyer decided to insert India on a green pitch under foggy conditions.

With an average speed of 135kmph, the right-arm paceman from Antigua considered as the 'express' bowler of the tournament, appeared deadly for the Indian top-order batsmen. Joseph used his pace and bounce, and extracted movement to become the wrecker-in-chief.

Removing three top-order batmen in Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Anmolpreet within his first seven overs, Joseph broke the back of the Indian batting and the subcontinental giants could not recover to set a challenging target for the West Indies, despite Sarfaraz Khan once again scoring a half-century in a crisis situation. Pacer Ryan John then picked up the two vital wickets of Washington Sundar and Sarfaraz to put the final nail in the coffin.

India however put a lot of pressure on their opponents in defence of a paltry total but dropping a few vital catches and a patient, unbeaten 125-ball 52 from Carty, coupled with Keemo Paul's -- he of Mankad fame -- unbeaten 68-ball 40 heralded a new champion in ICC's showpiece youth event.